The next partner goes to catch me at the next spin, but Nolan waves them away. The crew member obeys without question.
“Something,” he says, “is wrong.”
He looks at me patiently. Waiting.
When I don’t answer, he sighs. “Darling, I’m your husband,” he says, and it aches the way he says it, as if I’ve forgotten, as if I don’t have the slightest idea what that means. He doesn’t intend to be condescending, but his exasperation produces a pang in my chest. I can’t help but wonder if Iaso would have already told him—if she would have found the strength to say the words, to admit the wrong that I cannot.
“We don’t bear burdens alone anymore. We are one,” he says. “Your burdens are for my shoulders, and mine for yours.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, and it comes out in almost a whisper.
The song the band is playing stops, then transitions into a slower, more deliberate cadence. I can’t help but find it sinister, despite that being the furthest from the band’s intent.
“Darling, I want to know what’s happening in that mind of yours,” he says. “I want to follow it down whichever trails it decides to go.”
“You’ll be angry with me,” I breathe.
Nolan cinches his brow. “And what do you believe that would do to us, Darling? If you were to do something that upset me?”
The question is genuine, and there’s pain in the way his gaze rakes my face for an answer. I can’t find it within me, so instead I shut my eyes and place my head against his chest, listening to him breathe, soaking in the fact I no longer feel the rattle of wheezing.
“When I reached the Youngest Sister’s cottage, no one was there,” I say.
“Yes, I’m aware of that little detail,” he responds.
“Except there was your tapestry, strung up on the loom.”
“Did you see something unpleasant regarding me, Darling?” he asks. There’s a gentle chuckle in his voice, but a bit of anxiety, too. His chest tenses underneath my touch.
He’s wondering if I watched from the tapestry what happened in the warden’s office, and I can’t allow him to worry over that lie. “It was the end of the tapestry. You were supposed to die of the illness. It was going to take you that night. I’m not sure how much time we had left.”
Nolan softens, his anxieties over his shame quelled.
“So you rewove it,” he says.
“Yes. I rewove it, but…” I bite my lip, trying to figure out how to explain. “I thought that in reweaving it, I would have the power over your fate,” I say. “But when I undid your death andfixed your Mark, something happened. It was as if the ability to change your Fate had nothing to do with what I wove, but the power within the tapestry itself. Once you were healed and your life extended, the tapestry—well, it wove itself.”
“That only seems natural,” says Nolan hesitantly. “If I wasn’t to die in the Lost Boys’ house, surely there had to be more of my story. Are you saying you’ve seen my future?” He frowns, taking my chin and lifting it so that I’m forced to look at him. “Is that what this is about? You’ve seen something unpleasant in my future and you don’t feel I should know about it, and now you’re bearing that burden?”
I bite my lip and nod. It almost feels like a lie with how little it incriminates me, despite me deserving nothing short of incrimination.
Nolan pauses before saying, “Well, I can’t say I like the idea of knowing what my future holds before it happens. Especially if it’s unpleasant. But I won’t make you carry that on your own.”
“No one should have to know their own future,” I say.
Nolan shrugs. “Plenty of people would disagree. And plenty pay good money to those who have no power, just for the hope of looking behind that particular curtain. What did you see, Darling?”
The music stops, the band taking a break. The wind whisks its way onto the deck, playing with my skirts.
I drop my voice into a low whisper, unable to keep myself from shuddering. “When the tapestry rewove itself, Nolan… it showed you with the Sister.”
Nolan tenses underneath my grasp. “What do you mean by ‘with’?”
“I mean what it sounds like.”
Nolan’s face turns white, drains of color. His cheeks go sallow, his palm clammy where he holds my cheek. And for the first time, I witness something in Nolan I’ve never seen. He takesa step back from me, and the absence of his touch feels as if he’s ripped a piece of my heart with it.
“Nolan, I am so sorry,” I say.
